The Children's Train: Escape on the Kindertransport

by Jana Zinser

  “Where’s Eddie?” Jacob whispered to Anna.

  “I don’t know. I’ve looked everywhere,” Anna said.

  “What are you going to do?” Nora asked Anna.

  “I don’t know. I’m scared. Here or there our fate will probably be the same,” Anna said. “But I can’t face either without my son.”

  “Next! Name?” Victor shouted at them.

  “Jacob Levy and Nora Levy,” Jacob announced.

  “Oh, yes, the lice doctor,” Victor said, checking his list. He pointed to the waiting truck. “Wait over there for transport. Step aside.”

  Anna, not knowing what to do, stepped forward. “I’m Anna Vogner. I forgot something. I need to go back.”

  “No. You need nothing,” Victor said. “Where is Eddie Vogner?”

  “He’s here somewhere,” Anna lied, searching frantically for Eddie.

  “Wait over there for transport. Step aside,” he said.

  The processing of transports continued. Anna, Nora, and Jacob waited beside the trucks, wondering nervously what would happen to Eddie if he was left behind without anyone to look after him. Anna also wondered how she would survive without Eddie.

  Inside the apartment, Eddie hid in a dumbwaiter, wrapping his small uncoordinated body into the small space. Scrunched up like an accordion, he rocked his head back and forth. “Scared. Scared. Scared,” he muttered to himself.

  Footsteps entered the apartment. Eddie whispered almost breathlessly. “Dead. Dead. Dead.”

  It was Michael, the guard who resembled a complaining rodent. He stomped around, searching the apartment, his mouth twitching.

  Eddie held his breath, and his face turned red. His head still bobbed. He strained, listening for Michael’s footsteps, his eyes opening wide.

  Michael looked in every room. He stopped.

  Eddie grabbed his head, forcing it to stop moving. All was quiet.

  Michael took one last look around the small apartment and left.

  Outside, the trucks were opened, ready to be loaded. Jacob helped Nora and Anna climb into the truck.

  Suddenly, Eddie ran out of the apartment building and into the street toward them, his arms and legs flapping. “Wait for me! I changed my mind. I want to go!”

  Victor raised his rifle and aimed it at him, not recognizing the running, flopping boy as Eddie. “Halt! You are not authorized!”

  Jacob lurched, grabbed the rifle, and pulled it down. Eddie awkwardly jumped up and flung himself into the truck.

  Victor kicked Jacob and jerked the gun free from his grasp. The gun exploded, shooting Jacob, ripping his stomach open. His intestines hung out like spongy springs. He was propelled back and fell to the ground dead, not far from the other dead bodies waiting for pickup beside the curb.

  Victor stared at Eddie. “Oh, it’s you, the moron.”

  A man shoved the door closed, and the truck sputtered and took off.

  Nora and Anna sat shaking with terrified sorrow. Eddie’s hands flopped, and he screamed as he rocked back and forth. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m a moron! Poor Dr. Levy!”

  Anna and Nora hugged Eddie as they sobbed.

  “Dr. Levy won’t be coming back, right?” Eddie asked.

  Nora nodded between grief-filled gasps.

  “Is he like Oma Greta?” Eddie asked.

  Anna nodded.

  “Oh, no! Oh, no! Not again!” Eddie pulled at his hair. “I wish Hans and Stephen and Otto were here. I’m not good at this.”

  The truck with Anna, Nora, and Eddie drove along in the long line of trucks. The ones that went straight on an old dirt road were headed to the train station. The other line of trucks took a right, leading into a heavily wooded forest where the people riding in them would be lined up and shot, their bodies falling into a ditch until it filled with corpses. Then the Nazis would throw some dirt over it and dig another ditch.

  Eddie’s truck rocked to a stop. The door opened, and fresh air blew in, allowing the stale, sorrowful air to finally escape. Eddie peeked out.

  “It’s a train! We are going somewhere!” he said. “Maybe we are going home!”

  As they were pulled out of the truck, the police suddenly jerked Nora away and pushed her into another group heading to a different train. Anna and Eddie’s group were herded toward a train on another platform.

  “Nora!” Anna screamed. “Nora! Grab my hand!”

  Nora strained to get back to them, but the police, almost shoulder to shoulder, prevented her from reaching Anna and Eddie. She jumped up and down, trying to see them over the police, as tears streamed down her face. Suddenly, complete fear replaced the sadness.

  “Anna?” Nora yelled. “Help me!”

  Anna, being pulled in the other direction, grabbed onto Eddie’s arm and struggled to get to Nora. “Nora! I love you!”

  Realizing she could not force her way through the Nazi barricade of police, Nora jumped up one more time. “May God go with you!” she yelled, suddenly completely alone after the death of her husband a short time before, and now the separation from her best friend. She was empty. There was nothing left. She succumbed to the pushing police and the surging crowd and was swept along with her grief in a sea of deportees.

  Anna gripped Eddie’s arm as they were pushed into the center of the group. Anna’s response could not be heard over the rumbling of the approaching train, taking them to their uncertain destination.

  An empty deportation train pulled into the station in Munich, ready to load the people being transferred from the overcrowded Bockenburg Camp.

  Grundy, the Nazi guard, pushed Bert as he helped Helga into the train, but she pulled away from him. Bert lifted Eva into the dark train.

  “Danke, Papa,” Eva said. He climbed in after her. More than eighty people were crammed into their train car.

  The deportation trains were now a common sight. They rumbled through the German and Polish cities and the countryside, where local people went about their lives, mostly ignoring the trains filled with people barreling toward the death camps.

  Inside the train car, Anna and Eddie were barely able to breathe. They took turns sucking fresh air through the slats in the wall.

  The train slowed and pulled closer to the station. It was Anna’s turn to breathe, and she looked through the slats. She saw an old man driving a wagon pulled by a mule.

  She yelled to him. “Where are we?”

  The old man slashed his finger across his throat. Eddie watched Anna’s ashen, horrified face when she turned around.

  “What did he say?” Eddie said.

  “He didn’t say anything,” Anna responded.

  As nighttime crept around the train, it barely made a difference inside the almost pitch-black rail car. Several people had died. Their bodies were carefully laid in the corner, waiting for proper funerals that would never come. There was crying, moaning, and audible prayers, but there was nothing else that could be done for the dead. At a stop to load more people into the already crowded train, Anna heard that they were being t
aken to the Mengele Ghetto, just inside Poland, until it was decided which camp could process them the quickest.

  Eddie peered through the barbed wire twisted around the train’s small window. He pointed at the moon. “Look, Mutti. Look at the Nazis’ moon.”

  “No, Eddie. No one has power over the moon,” Anna said.

  “Then that’s where I want to live,” Eddie said.

  Anna put her arm around Eddie and sang “The Sleepy Moon.” Eddie rested his head on his mother’s shoulder. She always made things seem better and had kept him safe, refusing to put him in an institution when he was little. Eddie quietly sang along with her, remembering the old days before he knew about death.

  The Moon. The Moon.

  The big sleepy Moon says goodnight to you.

  He’ll see you soon.

  Close your eyes, make believe and

  Float away on the tune

  Of the big sleepy Moon.

  The Moon. The Moon.

  With freshly counterfeited documents, Sloan, Mica, and Peter drove the truck from Poland into Germany. They were traveling under the pretense that Peter was their nephew, and they were returning from the funeral of his father, who’d died in a dire farming accident involving a cow. Peter had added that detail.

  The lies fooled the border police guards. The gates lifted, and the three ill-equipped, but determined, commandos drove into enemy territory.

  When they entered Berlin, Peter thought he was going to throw up, afraid that at any moment someone would recognize him as the frightened little boy who’d run away from Germany on the train years ago.

  They drove to Edelweiss Park. From inside the truck, they stared at the Berlin Nazi headquarters, the old police station where Peter had begged for his father’s release. It was the target of their next operation: Extermination of the Rats. Peter eagerly looked forward to the explosion. On a limited budget, very little expertise, and logistical problems, their operations were mostly run on defiance, determination, sheer guts, and risky maneuvers.

  The Resistance rebels had to employ relatively primitive resources. The petrol bomb, or as some called it, the Molotov Cocktail, was one. It was a simple device consisting of a bottle filled with combustible liquid, usually gasoline, and a rag soaked in fuel stuffed in the bottle’s neck for its fuse.

  Sloan looked at Peter. “They are moving all the records soon. This is our only chance. We will go down to the basement where the records are kept, get what we’re looking for, and get out.” Peter nodded. “When we are out, we will throw a petrol bomb into their offices in the other side of the building to demonstrate our resistance, and boom!”

  “It is very dangerous, but for Isha, we must do it!” Mica said.

  “We will rendezvous at the old synagogue tonight to celebrate the elimination of the Nazi rats. And one last thing.” Sloan paused to look at Peter. “You will be the one stealing the records.”

  Peter shook his head. “Me? I thought you said it was dangerous.”

  “Yes, but you will be dressed as a Nazi,” Mica said.

  “No! No! No!” Peter threw up his hands.

  Sloan smiled and nodded slowly. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” He laughed and nudged Mica, who shared in his enjoyment of Peter’s reluctance.

  “Me?” Peter asked.

  “We need to get inside. They know us, but you look like one of them,” Mica reasoned.

  “I am gravely insulted,” Peter protested.

  “You are the bravest young rebel who has ever lived,” Mica said. “Children will read about you in the history books.”

  “Be bold,” Sloan said. “This is your chance to do something.”

  “I’ll do it, but don’t ever tell anyone I dressed as a Nazi. This is stupid. If I’m risking my life, it should be a big rebellion,” Peter said, gesturing with his hands. “Aufstand!”

  “Small acts of sabotage create fear. Fear makes them second-guess themselves. That causes mistakes, and mistakes can kill,” Sloan said.

  “But I’m talking about big, incapacitating sabotage. I’m talking about blowing up a death camp. Let the Nazis know that we’re not afraid of them, that we can strike from within and kill the killers. Make them live in fear. That would really make them second-guess themselves.”

  “Who are you?” Sloan asked. He turned to Mica and shrugged his shoulders. “Who is he?” His eyes opened wide, and he stared exaggeratedly at Peter. “I thought you were a violin player,” Sloan said, pretending to play the violin.

  “Violinists are fearless,” Peter countered. “Have you ever tried to play Mozart?”

  “Listen, maestro, today our goal is to find out where they took Isha and blow up a few offices. That is enough for now,” Mica said, smiling. “Then we will consider your big rebellion.”

  Peter was barely sixteen, but tall and serious, and looked much older in his Nazi uniform, a size too big. He marched up to the old Berlin police station next to Edelweiss Park. The building had been turned into the city’s Nazi headquarters. He mimicked the stomping of Karl Radley, who had forced them out of school when he was eleven. Peter would never forget Radley’s cruel vigor and the sound of his boots hitting the floor.

  Peter caught a glimpse of himself in the window wearing a mask of Nazi power, and he shivered. Mica and Sloan were right; he did look like one of them.

  Peter walked through the lobby unnoticed, but as he opened the door to go into the basement, a Nazi commandant grabbed his arm. “Where are you going?”

  Peter turned around to face Karl Radley, his old nemesis.

  Peter had heard that Radley’s cruelty and ruthlessness had allowed him to rise in the ranks and become a commandant. But now he was standing in front of him. Peter couldn’t speak. His mouth was dry. His tongue was thick. No words would form. Would Radley recognize him?

  “You must be new. That is the cleaning supplies closet,” Radley said, laughing at him.

  Peter coughed, and his tense body relaxed. His tongue finally found the ability to form words. “Oh, yes, of course. I was distracted.”

  Radley looked intently at him. “I just arrived from Poland, but I have not seen you before. What is your name?”

  Peter paused. His name. What was his name? He hadn’t thought that would come up.

  “Johan Bruno,” he said, invoking the code name from A Tale of Two Cities, and his favorite German Shepherd, unjustly killed despite his canine innocence.

  “Well, Officer Bruno, learn your way around here. We have important things to do, like win a war,” Radley said, as he walked away. “Supply closets will not help us do that.”

  Peter closed the closet door. He waited until Radley turned the corner, then opened the door next to the closet and hurried down the stairs.

  The basement was filled with file cabinets and shelves of files. Peter didn’t know where to begin. He searched the files, which were sorted by last name.

  The door to the basement opened. A clerk carrying a file came down the stairs.

  “I didn’t know anyone was down here,” he said, surprised. “Who authorized you?”

 
“Commandant Radley ordered me to find a file,” Peter said.

  “Radley? Well, don’t forget to put it back.”

  “Of course,” Peter said, nodding.

  The clerk took out a key from around his neck and unlocked a file cabinet. He removed some files and set them on top of the cabinet. As he locked the cabinet, one of the files fell between the two cabinets.

  “If this war goes much longer, we’re going to need more file cabinets,” the clerk said. “I’ll be glad when we move them all to a better location.” He took the files and went back upstairs. Peter sighed. He knew he had to hurry. He knew what would happen if he was found out. He flipped through them until he found Iron Isha’s file. As a prominent rebel, she was marked as high profile.

  Peter opened it and quickly read the documents. The news was not good. Iron Isha had been killed at the Bockenburg Camp near Munich, gunned down as she tried to escape over the wall. They were too late to save her.

  Peter checked the stairs. No one was coming. He figured, as long as he was here, he would look for his mother and sister.

  He searched through the other cabinets, but he could not find them. Maybe, he thought, they don’t have files because they weren’t arrested. Maybe they’re in hiding somewhere or safely in another country. Maybe.

  The door at the top of the stairs opened. He noticed the file wedged between the two cabinets, accidentally left there by the clerk. Peter picked it up. He stared at the pages inside that were filled with intricate grids of numbers and letters. If it had been in a locked cabinet, he figured it might be worth something.

  He took the pages and stuffed them under his Nazi uniform shirt in the waist of his pants, along with Iron Isha’s file. He hurried up the stairs, passing the clerk coming down.